The DAO

The purpose of the Incognito DAO is to give the project longevity. Incognito DAO collects a gradually reducing percentage of the block rewards, from 10% to 3%, to self-fund the development of Incognito.

100% of the Incognito DAO fund is used to finance community proposals that drive long-term growth. Previously, a board of 5 people - 3 from the core team and 2 external members - voted on community projects. With DAO v.2, voting rights will be gradually distributed to the community.

The Core Team

The core team (Privacy Studios LLC) currently consists of 41 members - mostly programmers and researchers. Its purpose is to support the development of Incognito.

Prior to the mainnet launch, the core team funded the development of Incognito with $1M of their own money. No ICO, private sale or VC funding. The consensus was that community members should not be asked to pay prior to any code being written. As such, the core team assumed all risks.

The aforementioned $1M was used to cover salaries, server costs, operational expenses, and community activities. Self-funding reduced price speculation among traders, avoided financial pressure from investors, and most importantly kept the core team laser-focused on what they do best - building and shipping products.

Community Builders

There is no official face of Incognito, no official product line. Just as the core team are simply the first community members, they are also simply the first builders. Everything is open-source.

Development is not restricted to just the core team. Our community has already built ecosystem tools, node status monitors, price charts, and more. Anyone can have a good idea and receive rewards if their product is deemed useful by the community. Whether it is a developer toolkit, a privacy wallet, or a privacy-first application like payroll, anyone is welcome to build on or for Incognito.

Businesses

Incognito is dedicated to the idea of privacy for all, and that necessitates ventures that make the ecosystem more diverse and sustainable. There are no restrictions on the type of business model or revenue structure you can have. Start your own SaaS business like a staking service, go e-commerce by selling your own hardware Node, create a for-profit privacy application… you get the idea.